Horaciobra Hosting Blog

The world is changing around the clock and the Internet had proven to be the fastest and cheapest way to communicate on a local, national and global level.

While direct marketing had proven to be a focused, trackable and measurable way to connect with consumers, e-mail marketing brought the advantage of being less expensive while providing an instantaneous message delivery to prospects and clients.  Straight-forward and affordable, e-mail marketing is a tool allowing businesses to contact customers directly and with a purpose.

While helping businesses build a relationship with their customers, e-mail marketing concentrates the company’s efforts on keeping in touch with clients and continuously reminding them of their services and products.  While providing a relatively lower cost for global reach, messages through e-mail marketing can be interactive through the use of graphics, music and/or whatever is necessary to engage the recipient and capture prospects’ attention.  Adding a personalized touch to the e-mail message would help create a special connection with the clients.

E-mail marketing can take different forms including newsletters, announcements and promotions.  And while newsletters are periodical containing news and information, promotional emails are occasionally used to increase sales.  Depending on the business, one or all of these could be beneficial.

Through e-mail marketing, businesses can announce special offers encouraging recipients to take action by making a purchase or signing-up for a service. In addition, businesses can aim at developing a long-term relationship with their readers by adding value and including content informing and benefiting the recipient.  Have a purpose in mind before developing the e-mail marketing piece and define the target before sending it out.

When planning to send out an e-mail message, take scheduling into consideration.  Blast emailing on a Friday evening, for example, might not be a good idea.  Recipients might not check their email over the weekend and those who do and become intrigued by a call-to-action will unlikely be able to reach a business over the weekend.  Businesses usually get one chance to reach prospects and get them to respond. Make the best out of it!

While it is cheaper and instantaneous to send an e-mail message to thousands of clients and prospects, getting the recipient to read and respond to the message is a challenge by itself.  Furthermore, keep in mind that e-mail marketing is permission based otherwise the recipient of the email may consider the message a spam – and categorizing a message as a spam is a major setback with major circumstances of negatively affecting a company’s reputation and image.

Courtesy of Manal Richa, The MarCom Network – offering Communications, Branding and Advertising solutions.

At The MarCom Network, we offer marketing and creative services assisting our clients in reaching their target customers and increasing exposure through a spectrum of services including advertising planning, branding, creative collateral designs, and web presence. For more information, please contact us at 949-596-4903 or visit us at www.TheMarComNetwork.com

Once you have decided your niche and you are ready to start your online business, you will need a good domain name and web hosting to make your online presence. Here are some useful tips to start your business online.

First and important thing is the selection of proper domain name for your business. You must stay away from imprudent, ridiculous or clever names rather you should try to make your domain name as simple as you can. This will help your patrons to recall even if they forget and in case of searching in search engines, it will help to raise your score in terms of keywords. Domain name with a primary word describing company name or company business is always a stable and potential choice. This is because your domain name is extension of your business and of course an online presentation of your business. In order to register you domain, always prefer reputed registrar. Though many domain name registration companies are providing their services but never take a risk of cheap company as it can cost you the loss of domain name. Always ensure domain privacy of your business so your details are not used illegally by any one.

Next thing is web hosting. Large number of web hosting companies are offering their services to host your website on their server. With so many companies, finding the perfect hosting according to your needs is really difficult. To make this easy you will have to define your requirements prior to any selection. These days many websites are providing web hosting reviews with different companies compared against their features and prices.

For a new business most important thing to look in a web hosting company is the uptime guarantee. Though most of the web hosting companies claim to provide 99.9% uptime guarantee but still this can not be confirmed until and unless you talk to some existing client of that company. This can be done on web hosting reviews websites where customers leave their reviews about the experience of a certain web host. Second thing is the customer support. Always prefer those companies which provide 24 hours support as geo location can make time difference which in your location can be a problem. Talk to your selected company before signing up so you can test it on your own.

Security is the other important thing to look for. For ecommerce websites or small business websites which provide online payment options in the form of credit cards must get Secured Socket Layer (SSL) feature. Almost all good web hosting companies offer this feature as an additional product. This satisfies your clients about their information being safe and secure on your website.

So its easy to get your business online but extra care in certain parameters like domain name registration can save you from future problems. Here I will mention one more thing about web hosting companies. Never compromise on price as cheap services can prove costly in future for your business in terms of security and support.